Tuesday, 6 December 2011

Final Blog Post

The Best and the Worst Aspects of the Internet.

Negative
As I have mentioned in my blog post four and five, the use of internet can do harm to a person in many different areas. It could be from harming ones computer and loss of many important files to complete destruction of the computer hardware. Maybe there is not a lot of important files and documents on the computer, but most of us use social net work cites to keep in touch with many important people and these people put them self out there to the public by uploading and even just liking comments and video shared links.

Lets first look over the computer viruses and malware. Like I mentioned above that in my previous blog I have talked about malware and explained it a little bit. Let us go further into detail a little bit. There is a thing, or should I say attack called Denail of Service (DoS) attack. What DoS attack does is it prevents a a user from connecting and using and accessing information from a server. How this is achieved is when the DoS attacker overloads the server with many "flood" of request and information the host server and network cannot handle the load. A server can only handle a certain amount of request at one time and if it overflooded by the attacker one cannot access the server.

Now this may not sound that much of a problem but when it is applied to a bigger scale it is a different story. One of the example is the the Anonymous Group's multiple attacks on big corporations and government websites. The attack on Visa.com and MasterCard.com was a big uproar to the community.

As you can see the use of Internet has created this another world of violence around the world where the people do not even need to be present at the location to cause this mass disruption, and it could lead up to loss of millions of dollars in a matter of hours.

Positive

Now lest look at the positive effect of Internet. The use of Internet has revolutionized the way we interact with each other. We are free to say and think what ever we want in our minds, and now with Internet we can express that feeling (almost) freely. Website such as Facebook, MySpace, and Hi5 have connected us with people around the globe and does not fail to keep that relationship strong even though the people may be 15 hour flight away from each other. John Ryan did a very good article on this subject of Relationship Benefits from the Internet.

The anonymity and freedom that the internet gives us can also be a good thing. It gives people an opportunity to speak freely without fear of retribution and gives everyone a voice. It also gives people the opportunity to ‘try out’ different personas and shed their social anxiety which can be a liberating experience. Internet is a place where people are judged only on the quality of their contributions.

Soon governments may take advantage of this open forum and start listening more closely; an age may exist where we all get a say on every decision that affects us, where we act as ‘one mind’ in decisions that affect the general public, but as completely autonomous and free individuals the rest of the time.

1 comment:

Technology can be viewed as an activity that forms or changes culture. Additionally, technology is the application of math, science, and the arts for the benefit of life as it is known. A modern example is the rise of communication technology, which has lessened barriers to human interaction and, as a result, has helped spawn new subcultures; the rise of cyberculture has, at its basis, the development of the Internet and the computer.